In the packaging of products such as bottles, cans, and other relatively tall products, the products generally are fed in a substantially upright attitude along a product infeed conveyor, to a point at which they are separated into lines or product lanes and guided toward a series of cartons moving along an adjacent carton conveyor. The products typically will be engaged along their lower or bottom portions by a series of selector wedges that separate the lines of products into product groups of two to four products for introduction into a corresponding product carton. The selector wedges are moved along a path beneath the product lanes or guides and therefore typically have a low profile so as to enable the selector wedges to pass under the lane guides. Because the selector wedges generally contact only the bottom portion of the last product in the group being selected along a particular lane, each product being engaged tends to have a natural tendency to tumble or fall backwards as it is accelerated by the selector wedge as the selector wedge separates the group of products from the remaining products in the lane. The taller the product being selected, the greater tendency the product will have to fall backwards due to the acceleration thereof by the selector wedge.
Historically, the principal solution to the problem of products tumbling and falling backwards over the selector wedges has been to increase the height of the selector wedges to increase the area of contact between the selector wedges and the bottom portions of the products being engaged. With the selector wedges engaging more of the product, the stability of the product is accordingly increased. However, increasing the height of the selector wedges has tended to create other problems. For example, for products such as bottles having labels applied thereto, the labels can be damaged or marred by the selector wedges engaging and rubbing therealong.
In addition, the height of push-in wheels or similar downstream loading devices positioned adjacent the end of the packaging line to complete the loading of the products within the cartons generally must be raised to allow the taller selector wedges to run thereunder. However, raising the push-in wheel height position tends to cause the products engaged by the push-in wheel to be contracted and pushed above their center of gravity, which can cause the products to tip forwardly or otherwise become unstable during loading into the cartons. Further, for contoured or specially-shaped products, such as bottles with concave profiles, increasing the height of the selector wedges often is ineffective at providing additional stability due to the inward curvature of the bottle providing only a small contact area with the selector wedge, thus enabling the bottle to still tumble and fall backwards as it is accelerated.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need exists for a product packaging system that addresses the foregoing and other related and unrelated problems in the art.